The UK has really been quite aggressive in installing CCTV surveillance cameras all over, trying to spot trouble before it escalates, but apparently they’re not very good at it sometimes. Glyn Moody points us to the story of the police spotting a man, who had been previously convicted of assault, walking along with his fiancee. Via the CCTV footage, police determined that the guy, Stephen McAleer, was carrying a knife, and a few weeks later, the police showed up at his house in order to arrest him, tossing him in jail for three months. The only problem? It turns out that the “knife” was really a rose that he had bought for his fiancee. Apparently, it took three months and then a trial to get this all sorted out. Don’t you feel safer now?

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I’m not a big fan of award shows and can’t remember the last time I watched one, so it’s no surprise that I missed the Emmy’s this past weekend. However, in an age where mocking the hosts of these shows for doing a terrible job is considered common practice, apparently a lot of people were impressed by some of Jimmy Fallon’s work hosting the show. Too bad NBC can’t let people see why. Staci Kramer, over at PaidContent notes that the opening musical sequence (a play on the TV show Glee with Fallon and various other TV personalities singing a Springsteen song) got a really good response online… but NBC can’t post it online due to “restrictions.” That is, NBC didn’t secure the rights to repost the song online, losing out on any potential benefits from helping make the video go viral.

Of course, it’s not clear who’s “at fault” here, but either way NBC ends up looking clueless (yet again!). It had to know that there would be value in getting such things online, and while the license holders might not have wanted to license it, NBC should have made the point that if it wasn’t put online legally by NBC, surely plenty of others would put it online elsewhere for all to see, without NBC or the rightsholders getting any direct benefit. It’s really a tremendous “head-in-the-sand” approach to dealing with these issues. Anyone who says they can license music for the show on TV, but not online, is missing the point, and NBC’s inability to explain this to them coherently is a negotiating blunder. And, because of that, others get all the benefit of the viral content, and NBC looks clueless online.

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I’m not a big fan of award shows and can’t remember the last time I watched one, so it’s no surprise that I missed the Emmy’s this past weekend. However, in an age where mocking the hosts of these shows for doing a terrible job is considered common practice, apparently a lot of people were impressed by some of Jimmy Fallon’s work hosting the show. Too bad NBC can’t let people see why. Staci Kramer, over at PaidContent notes that the opening musical sequence (a play on the TV show Glee with Fallon and various other TV personalities singing a Springsteen song) got a really good response online… but NBC can’t post it online due to “restrictions.” That is, NBC didn’t secure the rights to repost the song online, losing out on any potential benefits from helping make the video go viral.

Of course, it’s not clear who’s “at fault” here, but either way NBC ends up looking clueless (yet again!). It had to know that there would be value in getting such things online, and while the license holders might not have wanted to license it, NBC should have made the point that if it wasn’t put online legally by NBC, surely plenty of others would put it online elsewhere for all to see, without NBC or the rightsholders getting any direct benefit. It’s really a tremendous “head-in-the-sand” approach to dealing with these issues. Anyone who says they can license music for the show on TV, but not online, is missing the point, and NBC’s inability to explain this to them coherently is a negotiating blunder. And, because of that, others get all the benefit of the viral content, and NBC looks clueless online.

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It appears that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook for the horrible, horrible act of letting kids like ads. As TechCrunch explains:

On Facebook, you can “like” any status update or post in your stream, but you can also “like” ads. When you do so, it can appear as a status update to all your friends if that ad is linked to a Facebook page, thus turning the “like” button into a social endorsement…

The class action lawyers claim that in the case of teenagers, Facebook is “misappropriating the names and pictures of minors for profit.” Facebook might say that it is in its terms of service, that’s how the site works. But the lawsuit hinges on a loophole in California law which requires parental consent in order to obtain a minor’s consent for using their name or likeness for an advertisement, And Facebook doesn’t do that.

This seems like a clear “unintended consequences” situation. Politicians pass a law to “protect the children” from being exploited in advertisements, but it also has the potential to get in the way of really harmless activity, such as a kid clicking a “like” button on his Facebook profile.

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It appears that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook for the horrible, horrible act of letting kids like ads. As TechCrunch explains:

On Facebook, you can “like” any status update or post in your stream, but you can also “like” ads. When you do so, it can appear as a status update to all your friends if that ad is linked to a Facebook page, thus turning the “like” button into a social endorsement…

The class action lawyers claim that in the case of teenagers, Facebook is “misappropriating the names and pictures of minors for profit.” Facebook might say that it is in its terms of service, that’s how the site works. But the lawsuit hinges on a loophole in California law which requires parental consent in order to obtain a minor’s consent for using their name or likeness for an advertisement, And Facebook doesn’t do that.

This seems like a clear “unintended consequences” situation. Politicians pass a law to “protect the children” from being exploited in advertisements, but it also has the potential to get in the way of really harmless activity, such as a kid clicking a “like” button on his Facebook profile.

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A few weeks ago, we noted, with some disappointment, that the politicians who had been pushing for a much needed federal shield law for journalism, Senators Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, were taking the politically expedient route of adding a specific amendment designed to keep Wikileaks out of the bill’s protections. Apparently, a bunch of newspaper folks have stepped forward to support this move. Douglas Lee, at The First Amendment Center has an opinion piece calling those people out for sacrificing their overall principles just to get the shield law approved. The whole thing is a great read, but a few key snippets:

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that representatives of the newspaper industry would have recoiled from working with Congress to deny legal protection to anyone who leaked confidential or classified documents. Today, however, they seem happy to be doing so.

Lee then goes on to quote various industry reps distancing themselves from Wikileaks and putting it down as “not journalism.” He also quotes them admitting that they feel they have to throw Wikileaks under the bus, or the law won’t get passed. He then calls them out on the impact of that decision, hinting at the fact that at least some of this might be due to traditional journalists simply not liking new upstarts that are changing the game — like Wikileaks.

As comforting as it might be to “real” journalists to incorporate editorial oversight into a shield law and to use it to distinguish further between the “us” who are entitled to the law’s protections and the “them” who are not, at least two dangers exist in that approach.

First, does anyone — including the most mainstream of traditional journalists — really think it a good idea that Congress and judges define, analyze and evaluate what is appropriate “editorial oversight”? For decades, news organizations have struggled to resist those efforts in libel cases and, so far, those struggles have succeeded. If those same organizations now invite legislators and judges into their newsrooms to see how worthy their reporters are of protection under a shield law, they shouldn’t be surprised if the legislators and judges decide to stay.

Second, is the free flow of information really served if the act’s protections are denied to those who don’t have or practice editorial oversight? As Schumer acknowledged in his statement, the act already contains language that would limit or deny protection to those who provide or publish classified military secrets. Specifically exempting WikiLeaks and other organizations that might otherwise qualify for protection under the act in at least some cases seems designed not to enhance the free flow of information but to channel that information to mainstream sources.

It is the nature of politics today to compromise principles to get things through, but this move certainly seems unfortunate — and one that I imagine many news organizations will regret down the road.

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A few weeks ago, we noted, with some disappointment, that the politicians who had been pushing for a much needed federal shield law for journalism, Senators Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, were taking the politically expedient route of adding a specific amendment designed to keep Wikileaks out of the bill’s protections. Apparently, a bunch of newspaper folks have apparently stepped forward to support this move. Douglas Lee, at The First Amendment Center has an opinion piece calling those people out for sacrificing their overall principles just to get the shield law approved. The whole thing is a great read, but a few key snippets:

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that representatives of the newspaper industry would have recoiled from working with Congress to deny legal protection to anyone who leaked confidential or classified documents. Today, however, they seem happy to be doing so.

Lee the goes on to quote various industry reps distancing themselves from Wikileaks and putting it down as “not journalism.” He also quotes them admitting that they feel they have to throw Wikileaks under the bus, or the law won’t get passed, and then calls them out on the impact of that decision, hinting at the fact that at least some of this might be due to traditional journalists simply not liking new upstarts that are changing the game — like Wikileaks.

As comforting as it might be to “real” journalists to incorporate editorial oversight into a shield law and to use it to distinguish further between the “us” who are entitled to the law’s protections and the “them” who are not, at least two dangers exist in that approach.

First, does anyone — including the most mainstream of traditional journalists — really think it a good idea that Congress and judges define, analyze and evaluate what is appropriate “editorial oversight”? For decades, news organizations have struggled to resist those efforts in libel cases and, so far, those struggles have succeeded. If those same organizations now invite legislators and judges into their newsrooms to see how worthy their reporters are of protection under a shield law, they shouldn’t be surprised if the legislators and judges decide to stay.

Second, is the free flow of information really served if the act’s protections are denied to those who don’t have or practice editorial oversight? As Schumer acknowledged in his statement, the act already contains language that would limit or deny protection to those who provide or publish classified military secrets. Specifically exempting WikiLeaks and other organizations that might otherwise qualify for protection under the act in at least some cases seems designed not to enhance the free flow of information but to channel that information to mainstream sources.

It is the nature of politics today to compromise principles to get things through, but this move certainly seems unfortunate — and one that I imagine many news organizations will regret down the road.

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Speech technology efforts are top of mind as the company searches for ways to improve the most natural computer input method of all.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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We recently discussed the idea of much more open, online-based peer review processes. In the ensuing discussion some claimed that such things might work for subject areas like math, where concepts could be reviewed and tested by others, but might not work as well in other areas. However, a recent experiment by the Shakespeare Quarterly to experiment with a more open, online peer review system apparently worked quite nicely:

Mixing traditional and new methods, the journal posted online four essays not yet accepted for publication, and a core group of experts — what Ms. Rowe called “our crowd sourcing” — were invited to post their signed comments on the Web site MediaCommons, a scholarly digital network. Others could add their thoughts as well, after registering with their own names. In the end 41 people made more than 350 comments, many of which elicited responses from the authors. The revised essays were then reviewed by the quarterly’s editors, who made the final decision to include them in the printed journal, due out Sept. 17.

Even one of the authors who was quite skeptical of the program as “entirely won over” by the end, noting that the comments were “more extensive and more insightful” than he was used to receiving on his works.

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